You may have heard the saying: The money is in the niche And it is never truer than in 2016, when the internet is getting ever more crowded, and standing out is harder than ever. Although focusing on a very tight niche is very counter-intuitive, it has a huge benefit attached to it. By focusing on one product, one group or one idea, you are targeting your customers very closely. So instead of using the old spray and pray method, where everyone is your customer, you are now focused on a specific type of person. That means that you can adapt your messaging, your website content and your marketing in general to address the problems and needs of this specific audience. Now that is a great idea, right? So in this post, we want to highlight some companies that are doing a great job of focusing in on a tight niche in their industry and succeeding as a result. Concourse Hosting – Blackbaud Software Hosting Website: http://concoursehost.com As we all know, the internet is flooded with hosting companies that are undercutting each other to get the next hosting dollar from us and their competition. But rather than focus on a broad niche and offer software hosting for every man and his dog, Concourse has decided to niche down and go for hosting specific software – Blackbaud Software like Raisers Edge and Tableau to be exact. This means that they have discovered an untapped niche that is currently only being served by the software supplier and perhaps a couple of other players in the field. The result: a niche-based hosting...

Selecting a social media channel to focus on in 2015 is easy, right? Well maybe it’s not so easy. Why? Because each social media channel has it’s own unique benefits. Here’s the deal though, if you know what result you want to get out of your social media marketing efforts, you can then work in reverse to see what social media channel fits you best. What people and companies do in most cases, is they just jump onto the social media circuit without a plan, then they get frustrated, and then they say social media doesn’t work for them. The fact is, social media does work, but it only works if you have a clear road map of expectations and desired results laid out. We Asked Some People in the Trenches So we decided to find out from people in the trenches, what social media channel they were going to focus on in 2015. And in the following post, we have broken it down by person so you can see what each of them had to say. But first, let’s see how many people chose what social platform – and the winner is… THE RESULTS: WHICH SOCIAL MEDIA CHANNELS IN 2015 Twitter – 4 People Facebook – 4 People Google Plus – 3 People Instagram – 1 People Tsu – 1 People Pinterest – 1 People LinkedIn – 1 People Reddit – 1 People ​Definitely Twitter is the most active social media marketing channel for me. I've built an engaged base of followers (+25,000), which share and like the content I tweet. I use some tools like Triberr, JustRetweet and ViralContentBuzz in combination to Twitter. As...

Gone are the days of randomly posting updates to your social media marketing channels and you seeing a lot of engagement from it. There are way too many businesses (both small and large) absolutely crushing it on social media today. The main differences between the businesses that are increasing engagement on their social media channels vs. those that are complaining that social media marketing doesn’t work, is that the ones crushing it. All have a strategic social media marketing plan in place. Don’t get me wrong here, we’re always going to have the silver bullet companies that explode onto the social media marketing scene, but these are not the norm, and in fact, some say, the faster the rise, the faster the fall. So for your business, you may just want to stick with the basics and take the first step in forming a long term, strategic social media marketing plan. What Is A Strategic Social Media Marketing Plan Here’s two example to help get your head wrapped around what I mean by putting a strategic social media marketing plan in place. Example one: get a big plate of spaghetti, throw it up against the wall, and see what stick This is what companies that don’t have a social media marketing plan do, and it doesn’t work very well in the long run. Example two: get a high powered laser beam, focus the laser directly on one specific target market, and share highly relevant information to that market specifically. This is what companies with strategic social media marketing plans do. Not having a social media marketing plan in place, is...

In this post, you’ll learn 3 reasons why you may want to outsource your social media marketing. Have you ever wondered why time flies so fast, especially when you are on social media? Me too! It is officially a time vacuum. A place where you can start with the intention of only spending 5 minutes, then – Boom, an hour has passed by. Not only that, but despite all the time you spend on there, you are not seeing results either! Social Media Marketing is Flat Out Time Consuming Did you know that according to statistics found on Hubspot: The majority of marketers (59%) are using social media for 6 hours or more each week. (Social Media Examiner) Why is social media so time consuming? Finding information to post Creating information to post Responding to comments Responding to likes Thanking people for reshares … it all takes up time. Social media marketing is NOT something that you do for 15 minutes in the morning, then move onto other things for the rest of the day. Not if you want to do it right. Social media marketing takes a continuous effort, all throughout the day. Not only that, but 7 days a week as well. In social media marketing, you need to be online when your audience is online, so depending upon what part of the world your audience lives in, it can be a 24/7 effort. Social Media Marketing is Frustrating Like anything that you try, if you don’t know what you’re doing, it can be frustrating and time consuming. When you’re running your own business, there’s already enough stress...

In this short post, you’ll learn why it’s important that you get a social media marketing plan for your business. There are three main reasons why you want to get a social media plan together… well, there’s actually a lot more, but to keep things simple, I’ll just list three of the primary ones in bullet point format below. If you don’t have a plan, you’re going to get overwhelmed and feel like you’re lost in too much information If you don’t have a plan, you’re not going to know where you’re supposed to start and finish If you don’t have a plan, you’re not going to know what to measure your success against Social Media Can Overwhelm You Getting overwhelmed is one of the main reasons that people quit social media marketing in the first place. Have a plan about what type of content you’re going to post, as well as how often you’re going to post. Once you have your plan, stick to it. It doesn’t have to be a master plan to take over the world, just a simple and basic plan that’s going to keep you on track. Where to Start and Finish Posting on social media without a beginning and end goal in mind, is like running a foot race without knowing where the finish line is! It just doesn’t make sense. Define a starting point, as well as an end for your social media marketing efforts (or campaigns as we call them in the social media marketing world). Again, we’re not trying to sell everything to the world in one shot here, we’re simply making sure we...

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